Central Bank of Oman is live with a central ATM switch

The Central Bank of Oman announced that it has gone live with a common ATM and point-of-sale switch that operates on ACI Worldwide Inc.'s BASE 24-eps online payment processing software.

The switch, OmanNet, completes Central Bank of Oman's plans for a national payment system bank officials first outlined in 2003. OmanNet serves banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council, whose members include the Persian Gulf States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The project, for the first time, will give Oman the ability to link directly with all of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, instead of a single link through the member country switches. This means ATM transactions can be routed directly between Gulf Cooperation Council countries without going to wider card networks, said Catherine Eyres, an ACI spokesperson.

OmanNet consolidates two independent switches, Al Shamel and Al Watani, into a central solution under the Central Bank of Oman. The switch migrates all ATM and point-of-sale transactions onto one platform for participating financial institutions. OmanNet is expected to process approximately 5 million ATM and point-of-sale transactions each month.

In addition, the new system will be able to process EMV transactions. The project includes a national rollout of EMV technology for all of Oman's financial institutions. Oman has more than 1.1 million debit and credit cardholders.

ACI Worldwide, which has its headquarters in New York, announced in May the Central Bank of Oman had selected BASE 24-eps as the foundation for its national switch. The Sultanate of Oman is an Arab country in southwest Asia.